A BRIEF HISTORY & STUDIO PHILOSOPHY

I remember coming home from tour at the end of 2006 with a ton of ambition to get back to practicing like I used to. I think that lasted about one week because I wasn’t inspired behind my drums at all. Instead I was in desperate need of a new project or, really, just a new challenge.

While wasting that first week practicing, one good thing came of it, sitting amongst the many drums and few pieces of recording equipment I owned with barely enough room to play; it dawned on me that it would be great to have a bigger place for all my stuff...maybe even a small studio. I started looking around for a space in January, 2007, and it wasn’t long before my wife pointed out a building for lease that I thought might work. It was a rather bleak scene but I could already envision the studio-to-be.

When building Two Sticks Audio, our goal was to highlight the things that make a space inspiring. First and foremost was to design a great sounding drum room. A room that wasn’t too big but wasn’t too small, with a medium-high ceiling and plenty of resonance, and a smooth top end. The kick drum should sound big and round, the snare should have as much crack as body, and the idea of wearing earplugs dismissed, because everything sounds perfectly balanced, no matter how dynamic the player. Basically, a very natural sounding room, with natural light and a controlled climate, because the more comfortable we are, the better we play.

Another feature we wanted in the drum room was to have access to choices. Most drummers bring in a few options, but don’t have that many to start with and therefore end up borrowing or renting additional equipment. When you have all the options you’ll ever need right in front of you, finding "the sound" shouldn’t be a problem, not to mention it’ll save time and money throughout the entire process of making a record.

Our Control Room was also designed with comfort in mind. Because it’s the place that most of us like to hang out, it had to be spacious, even big enough to track in. It, too, has natural light and it’s own controlled climate. Have you ever felt like a vampire when you walked out of a studio, not knowing what time of day it was or how many hours had gone by? We’ve all been there, but you have to admit...it’s nice to know when the sun’s going down...or coming up!

Having good isolation and plenty of visual contact is key. With today’s recording practices, not everybody has the chops to nail it on the first take, and therefore can’t be in the same room as the other players. 4 different rooms were built to help isolate performances and instruments, but we’ve also made it possible to have everyone together in the same room. All the tracking options are in consideration of individual work flow needs.

Lastly, to round out the things that make or break a studio was to have good sounding headphone mixes, because bad sounding headphone mixes are a bummer! When you can’t hear well, you can’t play well! We wanted each person to have his or her own control of what they’re hearing by offering independent mixers with pans and EQ, solos and mutes.

Two Sticks Audio was designed to accommodate the full band in a live tracking situation, the singer songwriter and their producer, or the individual multi-instrumentalist who doesn’t want to have to reach that far to realize the potential of their ideas.

JASON MCGERR / OWNER

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

OUR STAFF:

DON GUNN - Studio Manager / Engineer / Producer

Sound is a compulsion for me and always has been. Music, birdsong, construction noise, the sound of heat bugs and crickets outside my window on a summer night when I was three and couldn’t sleep because it was so loud. Perhaps it’s to compensate for terrible eyesight (I’m legally blind), or perhaps because the right combination of melody and harmony can give me goosebumps - for whatever reason, sound has been a lifelong obsession.

My first recordings were on my father’s portable cassette recorder with a remote microphone. When my sister and I got our own recorder, I started playing back from one deck through its built-in speaker and adding new sounds while recording to the second recorder. I was hooked.

I first recorded in a studio when I was in high school; my band recorded a demo during our winter holiday and I felt like I’d found the place I belonged. I spent the three days we were there (when I wasn’t playing drums) sitting at the console next to the engineer watching his every move and absorbing all that was going on. That demo and the subsequent album we made the following Spring sounded...well, "less than good". This was the spark I needed to really start to learn about what was truly going on in the recording studio. That way, if my band sounded crappy, I could blame myself!

Nearly twenty years later I’m still at it and making a living so either everyone I work with is deaf(!) or I’ve actually learned a few things along the way. Which is a good segue into my next thought - I try to learn something new with every session. It’s easy to fall back on tried-and-true mics/preamps/gear, especially if time is short, but even in those situations I try to experiment with something on every session. If it doesn’t work, then I have the option of using what I know will work, but if it does..one more tool in the bag o’ tricks!

www.dongunn.com

Stuff I’ve recorded/mixed in the last year:
Harrybu McCage (Matt Cameron, Ryan Burns, Geoff Harper)
The Humans (Bill Rieflin, Toyah Willcox, Chris Wong)
Ian McFeron Band
Only Human
Camille Bloom (live DVD)
Alligators
Tom Marriott
Trsitan da Cunha
God Damn Electric Bill

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

JACKSON JUSTICE LONG - Engineer

Hello! I came to Two Sticks Audio after 7 years in Bellingham, WA where I ran the infamous recording program at Fairhaven College within Western. During those years, I drummed for the band Racetrack. We were lucky to spend four years actively touring around the Northwest and US, and making records together. Starting Racetrack motivated me to follow my recording curiosity and finally buy a multi-track recorder.

Perhaps only because these were the days before every college kid with a Mac had GarageBand, this snowballed into me recording bands in the garage of my rental home. I was motivated by the opportunity to record my friends and peers, and to see our recordings become albums, or at least something that could be played on the campus radio station. It might have been this organic progression that led me to the mighty KUGS-FM, where I produced the local show and championed the importance of the “in-studio performances.”

I find it exhilarating being in a room where music is being recorded. When I’m wearing the producer hat, I like building off of what’s there already: playing up something that wants to be louder, or hearing something that’s not there – yet. As one of the day-to-day guys at Two Sticks, you’ll find me producing/engineering, making snare drum recommendations, or maybe just patiently caring for the beloved Quad Eight.

In addition to the amazing stuff we’ve had through Two Sticks in 2008, recent projects include an EP’s with Telekinesis and with my own band, BOAT, and LPs with Shook Ones, Brownes Condition.

Recordings and discography at http://www.myspace.com/hearmeshimmer.

BOAT at http://www.ohnodisaster.com/boat

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

MICHAEL BENJAMIN LERNER - Engineer

Recording is fun. There are no mistakes to be made, except for maybe plugging an old RCA ribbon microphone into 48 Volts. That can be a mistake. But, there is no right or wrong. The most expensive microphone in the world can sound amazing on one singer, and the cheapest microphone in the world can sound amazing on another. The quest to find that amazing sound, capture that amazing moment, and have a good time whilst doing it is what being a recording engineer is all about. We are documentarians. We capture specific moments and document them to magnetic tape and computer hard drives. We make sure there is fresh, strong coffee at all times.

I’ve always loved recording, listening to old Beatles records, trying to figure out how the heck they did that with so few tracks at hand. I was so interested in those sounds that I went to Liverpool to study sound engineering in 2006 at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts. It was incredible to go to a school in the UK and learn the british style of recording. The studios, in fact, were designed by George Martin and were as quirky british as ever. I absolutely loved every minute of it, and I would schedule countless 2AM to 8AM sessions where I would go in by myself, and make loads of racket until my eyes started to sag, and the sun started to rise. It was invaluable experience, and I learned so much from applying the things that my teachers were lecturing me about during the day.

Some records that I think SOUND really cool:

*Queens Of The Stone Age "Songs For The Deaf" / *Billy Nicholls "Would You Believe" / *Brian Eno "Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy" / *Built To Spill "There’s Nothing Wrong With Love" / *Clinic "Internal Wrangler" / *ELO "ELO’s Greatest Hits" (Their hits are where it’s at for me) / *Eureka Farm "The View" / *Flaming Lips "The Soft Bulletin" / *Pavement "Slanted & Enchanted" / *Radiohead "Kid A"